Posted on 04/13/2019 8:58:19 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Doesn’t seem practical for much. Bragging rights?
American greatness.
Read the article, still not great.
I think it wouldn’t be bad to go back to nothing in space.
Ah Scaled Composites now owned by Northrup Grumman, and I wonder if “the wizard of weird” aka Burt Rutan penned the concept or even more before he retired....
Hard to imagine the strength of the main spar between the two fuselages.
Is it made out of spruce?
It’s designed to launch a spacecraft-carrying rocket from high altitude, thereby saving considerable rocket fuel and money on each launch.
Siamese airplane.
Geez I hope that works. It seems like a design nightmare.
Cheaper launches.
If the design works as intended (and the concept appeared often enough in late nineteen fifties science fiction) it will make money.
I try to avoid reading CNN - Counterfeit News Network. They are patently anti-American.
Those of us who read the article know that it's for launching rockets.
Two separate cockpits? Two sets of flight controls? Look at the landing-gear trucks! Can you imagine taxiing that beast?
Only one cockpit has controls, or even (IIRC) seats.
Guess they didn’t get the memo that airplanes were to be eliminated in 12 years because, cow farts.
Meh.
Still waiting (since the 60’s!) for my Flying Car that Popular Mechanics said I would have by now! ;)
It’s essentially a reusable first stage for an orbital launch system, using air-breathing engines that are much cheaper to operate than a pure-rocket first stage.
The two cockpits is puzzling to me. What happens if one pilot goes left and the other goes right? Maybe somebody well-versed in aeronautics can explain the concept of dual-cockpits.
Are the noses really that blunt? Otherwise, the front ends remind me of B1s.
The central wing must be tremendously strong. I would have expected the twin tails to be joined. But if it’s launching rockets, I suppose there’s always the chance of the payload passing between them.
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